One of the many reasons to buy an NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered device is support for Tegra Zone, NVIDIA’s exclusive gaming portal. Qualcomm is looking to combat the feature, however, and the company announced its own gaming portal on Thursday dubbed the Snapdragon GameCommand. Similar to Tegra Zone, GameCommand will have exclusive content that offers Snapdragon-optimized games for Qualcomm-powered devices. The app will initially only be available in North America and will be released in the Android Market on January 10th. Will we also see an O-Zone for OMAP-optimized games pop up soon? One can only wish. Read on for Qualcomm’s press release.

Snapdragon GameCommand to Launch on Android Market at CES 2012
UFC Fighter Alistair “The Reem” Overreem to be Onsite at Qualcomm’s Booth Showcasing One of the Latest Games Optimized for Snapdragon Devices

SAN DIEGO – January 5, 2012 – Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced that Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. (QuIC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, is expected to launch the Snapdragon GameCommand™ application to the Android Market on January 10, 2012, the opening day of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). At its heart, Snapdragon GameCommand will give mobile users a way to quickly discover, organize and access the latest Snapdragon optimized, featured and exclusive games. It will also provide feeds from top gaming news sites to help consumers stay up to date with the latest gaming news.

Snapdragon GameCommand will enable users to easily access and play many of the over 100 Snapdragon™ GamePack featured games on a wide range of mobile phones and tablets. The Snapdragon GamePack includes several titles exclusively available on Snapdragon devices running on Android for a limited time, including “Fight Game Heroes” from Khaeon Gamestudio. “Fight Game Heroes” features head-to-head battles with real MMA fighters, including multiple combat champion and UFC fighter Alistair “The Reem” Overeem. Visitors to CES will have the chance to meet the 6′-5″, 265-pound Overeem in-person and watch as he takes on Qualcomm executives in live rounds of “Fight Game Heroes” at the Qualcomm Booth in the LVCC South Hall, Upper Level, Booth #30313.

Other exclusive games that are accessible to consumers with Snapdragon GameCommand include titles such as “Bunny Maze 3D” from Eyelead Software and “Desert Winds™” from Southend Interactive. In “Bunny Maze 3D”, players help the adventurous Bunny get back his stolen carrots, in a cheerful journey through a magical world. In the “Desert Winds” mini-game players take on the persona of princess Amira as she battles gruesome creatures of the desert to save her people.

“With mobile gaming proliferating at a blistering pace, apps like Snapdragon GameCommand make it easy for consumers to discover and access the most advanced Snapdragon optimized games,” says Dave Durnil, director of advanced gaming at Qualcomm. “With exclusive and highly-anticipated games like ‘Fight Game Heroes’ and ‘The Reem’ Snapdragon mobile gaming is really starting to heat up.”

Snapdragon GameCommand is expected to be available in North America at launch and will be available in other markets at a later date.

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show is less than a week away and while HTC has plans to announce multiple devices with various carrier partners, the Taiwan-based vendor is seemingly saving its more powerful smartphones for next month. JPMorgan Chase analyst Alvin Kwok wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday that HTC plans to unveil multiple smartphones powered by NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor at Mobile World Congress in February. The handsets will also include Qualcomm’s MSM 8906 4G LTE chipsets, Taiwan-based financial newspaper Commercial Times quoted Kwok as having said. BGR exclusively reported details surrounding the upcoming HTC Edge smartphone, a quad-core Android phone set to be announced at MWC in February. HTC is also expected to unveil the HTC Ville, a dual-core handset thinner than Apple’s iPhone 4S, at next month’s show. While a number of analysts are forecasting a slow year for HTC, Kwok believes the vendor’s shipments will grow 15% in 2012 and 29% in 2013.

[Via DigiTimes]

Read

Lenovo may unveil a tablet powered by Google’s brand new Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) operating system by the end of the year, Engadget has learned. Reportedly, the device will also utilize NVIDIA’s brand new quad-core Tegra 3 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, arguably the most powerful mobile processor currently available. The tablet will also reportedly be equipped with a 10.1-inch display, 2GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM, a fingerprint scanner that may also be used as an optical controller, a rear-facing camera and a USB port. The device is said to tout a “Fusion-Skin Body” as well, though we’re not quite sure what that means. We wouldn’t be surprised to hear an official announcement in the coming weeks if Lenovo wants its new tablet on store shelves in time for the holidays.

Read

NVIDIA has finally announced its quad-core ARM Cortex A9 Tegra 3 processor, previously codenamed “Kal-El,” that will deliver “PC-class performance” for tablets and smartphones. NVIDIA said the new chip will offer 3 times the graphics performance of its dual-core Tegra 2 chip and it will consume up to 61% less power. If a user is listening to music or using a phone in a way that does not demand a lot of power, the new chip will automatically throttle down to use a companion core. Once a user fires up a game, browses the Web, or performs a task that needs the extra power, the Tegra 3 processor disables the companion core and activates all four processing cores. In addition to the four cores and the companion core, Tegra 3 also has a 12-core GeForce graphics processing unit with support for stereoscopic 3D, new video engines for playing 1080p HD video and more. NVIDIA said Tegra 3 is in production now and one of the first products to ship with it will be the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Read on for the full press release and a video that shows off the chip’s gaming capabilities.

NVIDIA Quad-Core Tegra 3 Chip Sets New Standards of Mobile Computing Performance, Energy Efficiency

 Tegra 3’s fifth ‘companion’ core enables ultra-low power consumption, while advanced quad-core processors drive record-breaking performance

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Nov. 8, 2011— NVIDIA today ushered in the era of quad-core mobile computing with the introduction of the NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 processor, bringing PC-class performance levels, better battery life and improved mobile experiences to tablets and phones.  The world’s first quad-core tablet with the Tegra 3 processor is the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime.

Known previously by the codename “Project Kal-El,” the Tegra 3 processor provides up to 3x the graphics performance of Tegra 2, and up to 61 percent lower power consumption. This translates into an industry-leading 12 hours of battery life for HD video playback.

The Tegra 3 processor implements a new, patent-pending technology known as Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP). vSMP includes a fifth CPU “companion”, specifically designed for work requiring little power. The four main cores are specifically designed for work requiring high performance, and generally consume less power than dual-core processors.

During tasks that require less power consumption – like listening to music, playing back video or updating background data – the Tegra 3 processor completely shuts down its four performance-tuned cores and, instead, uses its companion core. For high-performance tasks – like web browsing, multitasking and gaming – the Tegra 3 processor disables the companion.

“NVIDIA’s fifth core is ingenious,” said Nathan Brookwood, Research Fellow at Insight 64. “Tegra 3’s vSMP technology extends the battery life of next-generation mobile devices by using less power when they’re handling undemanding tasks and then ratcheting up performance when it’s really needed.”

The Tegra 3 quad-core CPUs are complemented with a new 12-core NVIDIA GeForce® GPU, which delivers more realism with dynamic lighting, physical effects and high resolution environments, plus support for 3D stereo, giving developers the means to bring the next generation of mobile games to life.

For the millions who play games on mobile devices, the Tegra 3 processor provides an experience comparable to that of a game console. It offers full game-controller support, enabling consumers to play games on their tablet or super phone, or connect to big screen HDTVs for a truly immersive experience. It also leverages NVIDIA’s award-winning 3D Vision technology and automatically converts OpenGL applications to stereo 3D, so consumers can experience 3D on a big screen 3D TV (via HDMI™ 1.4 technology).

The Tegra 3 processor provides the industry’s….

·         Fastest web experience – with accelerated Adobe Flash  Player 11, HTML5 and WebGL browsing, and an optimized Javascript engine

·         Fastest applications – with blazing performance for multimedia apps, such as photo and video editing

·         Fastest multitasking – for switching between common uses, such as playing music and games, and background tasks

·         Fastest, highest-quality gaming – including new Tegra 3 processor-optimized NVIDIA Tegra Zone™ app  games such as Shadowgun, Riptide GP, Sprinkle, Big Top THD, Bladeslinger, DaVinci THD and Chidori.

Highlights / Key Facts:

·         The Tegra 3 processor redefines power consumption and mobile-computing performance with:

o    The world’s first quad-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU

o    New patent-pending vSMP technology, including a fifth CPU core that runs at a lower frequency and operates at exceptionally low power

o    12-core GeForce GPU, with 3x the graphics performance of the Tegra 2 processor, including support for stereoscopic 3D

o    New video engines with support for 1080p high profile video at 40 Mbps

o    Up to 3x higher memory bandwidth

o    Up to 2x faster Image Signal Processor

·         40 games are expected to be available by the end of 2011, and over 15 Tegra 3 games are under development for Tegra Zone, NVIDIA’s free Android Market app that showcases the best games optimized for the Tegra processor.

·         The Tegra 3 processor is in production. Developers can order the Tegra 3 Developer Kit to create applications for devices with Tegra such as tablets and super phones, at developer.nvidia.com/tegra.

There are a number of smartphones that are currently powered by dual-core processors, but we have yet to see a big-name smartphone running a processor with four cores. According to Pocketnow, the first such device could be the HTC Edge, which will reportedly launch in the first or second quarter next year with NVIDIA’s 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor in tow. Rumors suggest the Edge has a 4.7-inch HD display, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera and support for 21Mbps HSDPA networks. The phone may also ship with Beats Audio.

Read

During the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong, ASUS CEO Jonney Shih took the wraps off of one of the first tablets to utilize NVIDIA’s new quad-core Tegra 3 processor. The Transformer Prime, which is just 8.3mm thick, is equipped with a 10-inch display, an SD card slot, a mini-HDMI port and support for up to 14.5 hours of battery life, Engadget said. It can also be docked to a full QWERTY keyboard, just like the original Eee Pad Transformer tablet. Details on the Transformer Prime are still slim and it is not clear if the tablet will ship with Android Honeycomb or Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Shih said Ice Cream Sandwich tablets should be on the market by the end of the year, and given the company’s plans to officially announce the tablet on November 9th, we’re keeping our fingers crossed this launches as one of the first Android 4.0 tablets. Shih did not discuss pricing, markets or a potential release date.

Read

The Kindle Fire hasn’t even hit the market yet but the tablet’s successor is already reported to be set for a launch in the second half of next year. Reportedly, Foxconn has secured orders for the device and is working to get the tablet out of the door and onto store shelves during that time period, DigiTimes said on Wednesday. Quanta Computer is building the current generation Kindle Fire, although Amazon is largely believed to already have a second-generation quad-core “Hollywood” tablet in the pipeline. Early speculation has suggested the Hollywood tablet will have a 10-inch display and BGR exclusively reported in May that it will be powered by NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 chipset. Foxconn has not yet confirmed it received the orders from Amazon, but the report matches up with several rumors that suggested the tablet would ship later than initially expected.

Read

NVIDIA’s chief executive officer and president Jen-Hsun Huang confirmed that the company’s quad-core processor, currently codenamed “Kal-El,” will be available in tablets by the end of this year. “We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm,” Huang told Forbes in a recent interview. “We’re really the only two active players.” Earlier this year, NVIDIA said it expected to ship quad-core tablets and smartphones in 2011, but Huang suggested to Forbes that smartphones may not hit the market until 2012. Read on for more.

Huang also explained that NVIDIA’s Icera purchase will help the company enter the mainstream smartphone market. Its dual-core Tegra 2 processors are only available in high-end devices right now, and though 100 million Tegra-powered smartphones have shipped globally to date, the company sees even more potential once it attacks mid-range and low-end devices as well. “We’ll be very pleased if we can be a sizable player in the mainstream phone market,” Huang said, noting that NVIDIA’s mobile business currently generates about $2 billion annually but that, by 2015, it expects that figure to grow to $20 billion. Huang also noted that NVIDIA currently has 50% of the Android smartphone market and 70% of the Android tablet market.

Read

Game publisher Mediocre officially released its new game “Sprinkle” on Thursday. Sprinkle currently runs on dual-core Tegra 2 devices but will be one of the first titles to support NVIDIA’s upcoming quad-core processor, currently codenamed “Kal-El.” We installed Sprinkle on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and, while it is definitely worth the $1.99 purchase price, we found it to be a pretty difficult puzzler. The idea is to use a large water spout to put out fires before they burn down the homes of the citizen’s you’re trying to save. You’ll need to lower or raise your spout and angle it correctly in an effort to douse the flames before you run out of water. There are a number of obstacles, such as large rocks, that make your fire fighting more difficult. The graphics are a bit mediocre, however, so we’re looking forward to the magic that Kal-El will add. If you plan on giving it a whirl, here’s a tip: to unlock all 46 levels just tap 5 fingers on the home screen. Sprinkle is currently available for $1.99 in the Android Market for Tegra 2 devices. Read on for a second image of the game.

The sequel to ASUS’ popular Eee Pad Transformer tablet was set to be one of the first slates to hit the market with a quad-core Kal El processor from NVIDIA. According to a new report from Fudzilla however, the convertible Android tablet has been delayed. The report cites multiple sources in claiming the Transformer 2 was set to be unveiled this month but has instead been delayed for “at least a month or a bit more.” No cause for the purported delay was supplied. ASUS’ Eee Pad Transformer has been one of the more popular Android tablets to launch over the past year. Some reports suggest it is one of only a few such devices with sales that will reach up into the millions this year.

After teasing a new tablet under the parody brand “TabCo” for the past several months, Fusion Garage took the wraps off of the Grid 10 tablet and a new Grid 4 smartphone on Monday. The Grid 10 offers a custom “GridOS” operating system, is equipped with a 10.1-inch 1366 x 768-pixel display and is powered by a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset presumably clocked at 1GHz. The GridOS supports Android applications as well, and users can purchase and download new apps from the “Grid Shop” or from Amazon’s App Store. In addition, GridOS has a unique home screen that allows users to create “clusters” of applications that span over an infinite amount of space. Fusion Garage also announced a GridOS-powered smartphone — the $399 Grid 4, which will ship in the fourth quarter — that will be powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The Grid 10 Wi-Fi tablet will launch on September 15th for $499, and a 3G-capable version will follow for $599. Amazon will carry the tablet and pre-orders are open now. Also of note, all existing JooJoo owners will receive a free Grid 10 in the coming months.

Non-Apple tablet shipments are expected to grow as much as 134% year-on-year in 2012, DigiTimes reported on Monday. That’s larger than the 55% shipment boost Apple’s iPad is expected to see next year. Android will be the catalyst for the growth; analysts predict that 19-20 million Android tablets will ship this year and that a far greater 44-45 million will ship during 2012 thanks to the introduction of Ice Cream Sandwich. The tablets will likely be powered by new chips from NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Apple is expected to ship 35-36 million iPad tablets this year and analysts project that it will move as many as 54-55 million next year. Those figures sound about right to us. In its fiscal third-quarter earnings statement Apple announced that it had sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter.

Read

United States International Trade Commission judge James Gildea has ruled that Apple’s Mac OS X operating system infringes on two patents owned by S3. Judge Gildea also ruled that the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch do not infringe on S3′s patents, however. The patents in question are related to NVIDIA graphics chips used in Apple’s Mac computers, but it is unclear which devices exactly are infringing on S3′s technology. HTC purchased S3 for $300 million in early July, and a different ITC judge recently ruled that the Taiwanese company is guilty of infringing on two patents owned by Apple related to a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data,” and a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data.” HTC’s chief financial officer Winston Yung said on Tuesday that his company was willing to bury the hatchet with Apple and that the two companies have to “sit down and figure it out.”

Read

Verizon Wireless announced on Tuesday that it will offer Samsung’s 4G LTE Galaxy Tab 10.1 beginning Thursday, July 28th. There will be 16GB and 32GB models available for $529 and $629, respectively. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 runs Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) and is equipped with a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800-pixel resolution display, a 3-megapixel camera capable of recording HD video, and a 2-megapixel forward-facing camera for video chats. Customers can choose from three different monthly data plans from Verizon Wireless, including a $30 2GB option, a $50 5GB option, and an $80 10GB option. In our recent review of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 we called it the “thinnest, sexiest tablet available today.” Read on for the full press release.

SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB 10.1 WITH 4G LTE AVAILABLE AT VERIZON WIRELESS

4G LTE and Wi-Fi Models Available; 8.6 Millimeters Thin and Weighing in at 1.25 pounds

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Verizon Wireless and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) today announced that the Samsung Galaxy Tab™ 10.1 with 4G LTE will be available July 28 in either Metallic Gray or Glossy White in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online at www.verizonwireless.com/SamsungTab4GLTE.

Key features:
·         4G LTE – customers can expect download speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G Mobile Broadband coverage areas
·         Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
·         Android™ 3.1 Honeycomb platform – supports Google™ Mobile Services including Gmail™, YouTube™, Google Talk™, Google Search™, Google Maps™, Google Movies™, Google Books™ and Android Market™
·         Adobe® Flash® 10.3 technology
·         NVIDIA® Tegra2 dual-core 1 GHz application processor
·         10.1-inch HD touchscreen display with WXGA 1280 x 800 resolution
·         3-megapixel rear-facing camera and 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat capabilities
·         1080p HD video playback on a HD TV or other 1080p HD device
·         Samsung Media Hub – offers a vast lineup of critically acclaimed films and TV programs for rent or purchase.  Media Hub has been redesigned, allowing customers to playback Media Hub content on their TV through an HDMI adapter (sold separately).  Purchased content can be shared with up to five devices enabled with Media Hub at no extra cost.

Pricing and data plans:
·         Verizon Wireless will offer two 4G LTE Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 models both priced with two-year customer agreements: $529.99 for the 16GB model and $629.99 for the 32GB model.
·         Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 customers will have the option to choose one of the following mobile broadband data plans:
o    $30 monthly access for 2GB monthly allowance
o    $50 monthly access for 5GB monthly allowance
o    $80 monthly access for 10GB monthly allowance
·         A 16GB Wi-Fi-only Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will also be available online at www.verizonwireless.com on July 28 for $499.99.  The Wi-Fi-only model will be available in Metallic Grey.

Samsung Media Hub Credit:
·         For a limited time, Verizon Wireless customers will get a free $25 Media Hub credit from Samsung with their Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 purchase, good towards TV program purchases. Restrictions apply, see inbox insert for additional details or visit www.samsung.com/VerizonTabPromo.

Qualcomm said it expects to ship between 120 million and 125 million chips during the quarter ending in September, a figure that is lower than the 130 million units MLM Partners LLC analyst Tero Kuittinen expected the company to move. The lower projection hit Qualcomm in late trading on Tuesday when its stock price fell 3.8%. Qualcomm blamed the lower than expected forecast on a weak European economy and said that consumers there aren’t buying new phones as quickly. “Chip units for autumn are light,” Qualcomm chief financial officer Bill Keitel said during a conference call. “The blame likely lies in Europe. European inventory correction now seems to be a fact instead of a theory. We reduced a bit our forecast for how many new CDMA-based units would sell into Europe. The situation demands that we still be cautious.” The company also noted that it hopes to begin working with manufacturers to build its Snapdragon processor into tablets. That chip is mostly used in smartphones now and manufacturers such as Samsung and Motorola have instead used NVIDIA’s dual-core Tegra 2 chip to power Android tablets.

Read